I'm most worried about this forum--if they move away from Fantasy Flight Games, will this get discontinued? Where am I supposed to complain about Dash and post my uninformed opinions?

33 minutes ago, cptmusket said:

According to ICV/2 the Spring 2020 top non-collectable miniatures sales were:

1	Warhammer 40K	Games Workshop
2	Age of Sigmar	Games Workshop
3	D&D Nolzur's Marvelous Minis	WizKids
4	Star Wars Legion	Fantasy Flight Games
5	Pathfinder Deep Cuts	WizKids

By comparison, Spring 2019 was:

1	Warhammer 40K	Games Workshop
2	Age of Sigmar	Games Workshop
3	D&D Nolzur's Marvelous Minis	WizKids
4	Star Wars X-Wing	Fantasy Flight Games
5	Star Wars Legion	Fantasy Flight Games

Those are not promising market trends.

1 minute ago, Frimmel said:

Should we even expect these games to continue? Going by the rumored layoff it seems they've kept the minions who would best be able to get the products past the point of cancellation to market while dismissing those most responsible for creating new products. By my reckoning there are four X-wing products, four Legion products, and six Armada products that we should expect by the end of the year. The only other things claimed are an additional four Armada products that have not had a particularly formal announcement but which may be past the point of cancellation. These may well mark EOL for all of these games.

I don't know; the announcement, the manner in which it was handled and it's timing is all really concerning to me; and they did the announcement a week before release of a new Wave which is also intriguing. I have deciced until I get more information and the direction of AMG I am stopping and purchasing, they now need to convince me that they're going to continue the line for years and that thier will be no fundamental changes to the structure of the game itself. I am very hesitant they can do that.

8 minutes ago, Frimmel said:

Should we even expect these games to continue? Going by the rumored layoff it seems they've kept the minions who would best be able to get the products past the point of cancellation to market while dismissing those most responsible for creating new products. By my reckoning there are four X-wing products, four Legion products, and six Armada products that we should expect by the end of the year. The only other things claimed are an additional four Armada products that have not had a particularly formal announcement but which may be past the point of cancellation. These may well mark EOL for all of these games.

Why go through the issues and costs assosiated with moving these 3 lines to another company just to cancel them?

If Asmodee want to cancel the 3 games they could just have easily stopped them while under FFG's umbrella

2 hours ago, Wayne Argabright said:

wish they would come out and say WHY they are doing this.. I am old school.... If it aint broke don't FIX it.... I dont think it was broke, but i have no clue what's going on behind the curtains... Now if this was Wiz kids lol then yes it would be great because STAW IS BROKE..

Isn't Asmodee a private equity firm? ALL of their decisions are made because they think it will increase profit margins and bottom lines.

11 minutes ago, Revanur said:

Why go through the issues and costs assosiated with moving these 3 lines to another company just to cancel them?

If Asmodee want to cancel the 3 games they could just have easily stopped them while under FFG's umbrella

In the X-wing boards someone was saying they cancelled their pre-order for the ships do in the next 2-4 weeks. If they are cancelling Armada and/or cancelling not going through with the Q1 2021 expansions for Clone Wars Armada I will be cancelling my pre-order for the December Armada releases. They are already likely to take a hit on these upcoming product lines without a straight-up cancellation announcement or with announcement of new editions of these three games or changes to the way products for these games release. I suspect a cancellation announcement could also have the dreaded "scalpers" popping up to try and extort the fans for these final products.

24 minutes ago, Frimmel said:

Should we even expect these games to continue?

Short answer? Yes. Asmodee confirmed in an interview with Team Covenant that they've got X-Wing/Armada/Legion products mapped out with LFL through until 2023.

Double post.

7 minutes ago, EBerling said:

Isn't Asmodee a private equity firm? ALL of their decisions are made because they think it will increase profit margins and bottom lines.

No they're not. But their owners, PAI Partners and previously Eurazeo, both are.

2 minutes ago, Frimmel said:

In the X-wing boards someone was saying they cancelled their pre-order for the ships do in the next 2-4 weeks. If they are cancelling Armada and/or cancelling not going through with the Q1 2021 expansions for Clone Wars Armada I will be cancelling my pre-order for the December Armada releases. They are already likely to take a hit on these upcoming product lines without a straight-up cancellation announcement or with announcement of new editions of these three games or changes to the way products for these games release. I suspect a cancellation announcement could also have the dreaded "scalpers" popping up to try and extort the fans for these final products.

The fact that people freak out now and because of that cancel their pre-orders does not equal Asmodee cancelling the lines. It's people paranio of change and a measure of uncertainty untill further announcements of products to come are made.

I sooner expect that we have had a low on new content announced due to them first needing to announce these changes before we see the new products announced via AMG instead of FFG were we would have expected it.

I really don't see them cancelling Armada right after they release a version 1.5 with changes to old upgrades etc. Launching Clone wars and completly changing the sizes and lay-outs of the cards. Lots of costs which will then be completly wasted next to the aforementioned costs of moving the lines to another company.

2 hours ago, Wayne Argabright said:

wish they would come out and say WHY they are doing this..

They did, in the Team Covenant interview eight months ago.

https://youtu.be/E6Pu7RmbCCQ

This is about as much public information that one can expect. Steve explained details of the planned split, including the official version of the WHY - except that he didn't mention that FFG Miniatures would be AMG, of course. I guess that anybody who knows Asmodee's company structure could have figured this out. The present move looks like everything is proceeding just as announced, pandemic or not.

He did talk about the Winter layoffs. Obviously, no talk about the future in that respect.

There was emphasis on a long-term release plan which was just approved by Lucasfilm. A firm statement of support that covered all three SW miniature games. He explicilty mentioned Mandalorian content to appear after Season 2. I wouldn't be concerned about the future of X-Wing too much, from the player perspective - they will want to sell more, and to be successful, it has to be attractive and affordable.

Speculation: AMG introduces new X-Wing product lines aimed at a different audience. A solo mode is in development already. Max was heavily hinting at campaign play in the Crabbok interview. This might be simpler without in-house boardgame competition. Conversely, a reboot of competitive X-Wing doesn't really make sense - 2.0 should have proven that such a move is difficult, to say the least, so why should they?

2 minutes ago, Revanur said:

I really don't see them cancelling Armada right after they release a version 1.5 with changes to old upgrades etc. Launching Clone wars and completly changing the sizes and lay-outs of the cards. Lots of costs which will then be completly wasted next to the aforementioned costs of moving the lines to another company.

And I'm sure the designers and devs of those new waves and the 1.5 edition and such didn't expect to be suddenly laid off, but according to the Reddit discussions, it seems like they were... So odds are people involved in making this new content fully expected to still be rolling out this new content at FFG for years to come.

I'd assume nothing about the future of these lines for the time being, until we see what, if anything, Atomic Mass Games has planned for them (for instance, AMG currently has no Organized Play).

5 minutes ago, EBerling said:

And I'm sure the designers and devs of those new waves and the 1.5 edition and such didn't expect to be suddenly laid off, but according to the Reddit discussions, it seems like they were... So odds are people involved in making this new content fully expected to still be rolling out this new content at FFG for years to come.

I'd assume nothing about the future of these lines for the time being, until we see what, if anything, Atomic Mass Games has planned for them (for instance, AMG currently has no Organized Play).

Still doens't explain going through the costs and trouble of moving it to another company. They could also have announced ending the lines and therefor laying off the employes.

I expect announcements of new products for 2021 soon under the banner of AMG. Them having no OG is not a problem, they can go of FFG's experience in it. FFG also had to start it's OP up someday.

13 minutes ago, Revanur said:

The fact that people freak out now and because of that cancel their pre-orders does not equal Asmodee cancelling the lines.

I'm saying freak outs is why this is being framed as "moving" the lines and not being phrased as impending cancellation of these lines.

So what exactly is going on??

9 minutes ago, KCDodger said:

So what exactly is going on??

I think this is Asmodee continuing the restructure of the games companies/studios they own to each focus on a specific type of game:

• Atomic Mass Games = Miniatures games (Marvel Crisis Protocol, Armada, Legion, X-Wing)
• Edge Studio = RPGs (Star Wars, L5R, Genesys, etc.)
• Fantasy Flight Games = Board and card games (Outer Rim, Rebellion, Keyforged, assorted Arkham titles, etc.)

It probably makes a lot of (business) sense to group similar types of games together in the same place, although this is just speculation rather than based on any insider knowledge. 🙂

You know, the simplest explanation is probably the truest - Games of the same type are being consolidated into studios that can focus exclusively on those games. I'm withholding any speculation, because honestly, it's not worth the uncertainty in an already-uncertain time. I'm inclined to agree with the posters who are noting that this has all the vibes of a corporate shuffle.

Can anybody give me any reason to think that there's even a need for X-Wing 2.5 or 3.0 at this point? I mean, there's always the posters who are salty about spam lists, or the app's drawbacks, or broken Boba, but ultimately, these are pretty much opinions, with no particular weight of evidence other than someone's feeling upset about something they disagree with. For a casual like me, these mean less than nothing. Do any of these impact the game in its entirety, such that an entire redesign is necessary? I don't think so.

6 minutes ago, feltipern1 said:

Can anybody give me any reason to think that there's even a need for X-Wing 2.5 or 3.0 at this point?

New things sell more than old things? They are perhaps only selling this to an established base and are not attracting new players or bring lapsed players back frequently enough? Corporations want to grow products lines and profits. From our point of view we do not need new editions. Our point of view is not the one that counts.

1 minute ago, Frimmel said:

New things sell more than old things? They are perhaps only selling this to an established base and are not attracting new players or bring lapsed players back frequently enough? Corporations want to grow products lines and profits. From our point of view we do not need new editions. Our point of view is not the one that counts.

Point still holds, though - does any of this impact the game enough to invest in a redesign? That costs money, time, and talent. I mean, I can see the reason for trying to attract new players, but that's not likely to happen in the current fandom, who've drawn battle lines around Disney's sequel trilogy, the potential salvation of the Star Wars universe through The Mandalorian and other upcoming live-action shows, etc. Many of that group are going to stick to their guns on what ships/factions they want to fly, whether they're OT, PT, or ST fans, or any of several other hills to die on.

1 hour ago, Frimmel said:

Should we even expect these games to continue? Going by the rumored layoff it seems they've kept the minions who would best be able to get the products past the point of cancellation to market while dismissing those most responsible for creating new products. By my reckoning there are four X-wing products, four Legion products, and six Armada products that we should expect by the end of the year. The only other things claimed are an additional four Armada products that have not had a particularly formal announcement but which may be past the point of cancellation. These may well mark EOL for all of these games.

That doesn't make much sense to me.

FFG simply cancelled Destiny. Like, if Asmodee wanted to end X-Wing and Armada and Legion, I think they'd just do it.

It does happen that companies will sell off bits that are on their way out (Olympus selling off their camera division to a company expected to shut it down), but that's selling stuff to a different company entirely, nor a semi-internal reorganization. Moving from one subsidiary to another seems like more work than it's worth.

1 minute ago, feltipern1 said:

Point still holds, though - does any of this impact the game enough to invest in a redesign?

I do not know. I don't have the numbers. I do know they appear to have the let the leads of all of these games go. That very much suggests not continuing on the current path. I'm out in the woods making wild-backside guesses. So...

I wouldn’t assume anything. Anything said 8 months ago is worthless as the world has changed completely since then. But I think this change wouldn’t be happening if X-Wing sales were satisfactory - I’m pretty sure things are going very badly and they’re in ‘rescue or ditch’ mode.

Its possible we will never see another X-Wing release, it’s possible we will see 3rd Edition, it’s possible we barely notice the change at all.

But all bets are off.

Personally, I think there's some mental gymnastics on the split out of "miniature games" to AMG.

How do these miniature games really differ from something like Descent? Yeah you can find some distinctions but the lines blur quickly. Descent also had many releases over multiple years and was very unpainted miniature focused. FFG has a history of miniature heavy board games, so really what's the distinction? If it was the "hobby" level games that require assembly and painting then sure, but X-Wing and Armada are effectively board games played on a mat or table (Wings of War was just a board game as well). Honestly, this just seems like an arbitrary definition to defend or explain the corporate move.

You could argue that these miniature games are more "open-ended" in terms of future releases, but I don't think that's completely accurate. Descent 1rst and 2nd ed kept releasing expansions so long as it was supported by sales. Is that really any different than how Armada is handled?

So to sum up Asmodee's clear direction with these games going forward.

- Games that require miniature assembly and painting are miniature games (AMG).

- Games that have miniatures that do not require assembly or painting, and are played on mats with cardboard accessories are also miniature games (AMG).

- Games that have miniatures that do not require assembly, and are not painted, and involve cardboard accessories but not mats are board games (FFG).

- Games that are card based and played on mats with cardboard accessories, like Keyforged, are also board games (FFG).

Yeah the distinctions are incredibly clear on what will be handled by FFG vs Atomic going forward.

16 hours ago, Vykk Draygo said:

But it’s still all owned by the same company. I’m still optimistic that things can be turned around but with a complete and utter failure in the app and distribution issues I really expect more of the same. This is still all the same company irregardless of what you call it, it’s like having a terrible landlord and hoping for changes because his wife starts collecting rent instead.

Using your analogy this is literally a new landlord.. while some team member have been transferred to the new subsidiary. AFAIK there is a new project lead...

the only thing that stays the same is your management company your landlord works for is the same. And let’s be honest the issues I mentioned above about distribution and the app had nothing to do with Asmodai. Those issues existed prior to them buying FFG.

A re-organization measure is announced well in advance, and then applied exactly as announced ... as if the world didn't change at all.

Whatever sales have been and who is in charge now - I'd rather be looking forward to further news from AMG.